Deep Rotations: 2021 — 50+ Essential Records

Last year I felt myself drawn to music imagining new paths forward. My favorite records deconstructed arbitrary barriers and between genres and technologies, exploring hybridized spaces and relationships between tradition & innovation, spirituality & politics, composition & improvisation, acoustic & digital, etc, in order to express resistance to oppressively rigid systems and offer visions of possible futures. Sounds of imagination, rituals, transformation, and liberation abound.

click any album cover for listening links, more pictures, and other info about the record

a few other albums I dug that either aren’t available on LP or I haven’t had a chance to pick up yet:

1. otay:onii – ?? (Míng Míng) [post-industrial, Chinese folk music, experimental electronic]
2. Fuubutsushi – Setsubun (??) [Folk-Jazz, Ambient, New Age, Chamber Jazz]
3. Richard Dawson & Circle – Henki [Art Rock, Songwriter, Prog]
4. Patrick Shiroishi – Hidemi [Avant-Jazz, Post-Minimalism]
5. Space Afrika – Honest Labour [Collage, Ambient, Experimental]
6. Grouper – Shade [Ambient Folk, Lo-fi Songwriter]
7. Vapor Theories – Celestial Scuzz [Drone, Psychedelic, Ambient Blues]
8. Injury Reserve – By the Time I Get to Phoenix [Experimental Hip-Hop, Glitch Hop, Sound Collage]
9. Aesop Rock x Blockhead – Garbology [Abstract Hip-Hop, Boom-Bap]
10. MxLx – Nebula Rasa [Post-Industrial, Experimental, Minimal Synth, Progressive Electronic]
11. Embryo – Auf Auf [Prog, Arabic Jazz, Kosmische Jazz, Psych]
12. Adia Victoria – A Southern Gothic [Gothic Americana, Songwriter, Blues Rock, Alt-Country]
13. Naaljos Ljom – Naaljos Ljom [Norweigan Future Folk, Electroacoustic]
14. BLK JKS – Abantu / Before Humans [Afro-Rock, Psych, Prog]